And learn, too late, they grieved
by jomiddlemarch
Summary: Five things Cassian never learns about Jyn, where five is an approximation and there is no room for regret. And then the converse. Title from Dylan Thomas.


I.

1\. Jyn's formal education consisted of a primer in Basic, a collection of Alderaanian essays on environmental theology that she never understood, and a very long, obscure Umbaran poem called "The Travail of Crisianth" which was so highly allegorical that Jyn could make it mean anything or nothing at all, all the myriad times she read it. A mercenary named Rieger taught her to calculate before he was shot in a brawl. No one taught her to sing; that she learned from listening and from the long nights she was alone, before Saw found her, and all the long nights that followed.

2\. She doesn't ever dream of space. She dreams of a house or a cabin or a stone tower overlooking a vast green sea. She dreams of building fires in a hearth, taking branches from a woven basket, throwing twigs and dried leaves in as tinder. When she closes her eyes, she imagines a bed tucked into the curve of a wall, piles of llaskey-wool blankets at the foot, a nest of pillows, not the metal bunk she's been given or had to claim. In her sleep, she smells spices, lets the steam from a tisane bathe her face, lets a silken dressing-gown fall from her shoulders before she steps into a tub of scented water.

3\. Jyn doesn't believe in promises, because they all get broken, but she does believe in bets, because they get paid. She doesn't believe in ghosts, because none haunt her, but she believes in curses, because there is one upon her. She believes in love, but thinks it is rarer than khyber, and she believes in beloveds but she has never been one. She believes in rules because she can break them. She believes in sacrifice but not plenty and she could not get everything she wanted because she could not have said what it was.

4\. It is when she hates Cassian that Jyn is first afraid. When he annoyed her and constrained her, he was just another being in a long line. When he turned his back, she almost smiled in recognition. When she feels an urgency in her hands to hit him, when she understand how much she wants to scream obscenities, something in her shivers. She is aware, dimly at first, that her hatred is passion, and that she wants him to speak to her softly when she shrieks, to stroke one hand down her forearm before he catches her fist in his callused palm and says _Settle down, miJyn-nia_ , his accent pronounced, the way it would sound at dawn.

5\. She is curious about him. She wants him to tell her stories about Fest and becoming an outlander. She wonders whether he likes card games better than chessick. She has a thousand questions for him but she has learned never to ask if it can be helped. She doesn't expect it when she finds him looking at her speculatively but she likes it. She would have liked to be held before the beach on Scarif, but she was satisfied with the embrace he gave her, how it was all he had left and how it was also how she kept him alive. She would have liked to discover the endearment meant for him alone, in all the galaxy. She doesn't know what his eyes would have looked like it they hadn't brightened with death, with Force, if they had lit for her alone.

II

1\. Cassian was not the name his parents called him. His mother called him _Small one_ or _my last drop_ , from the Festian proverb about a child being worth every bit of blood in a mother's heart, even to the last drop she could shed. His father called him Andi, as every firstborn Andor had been called since the seventh generation, since Taranet strode the shores of Lake Braix. His grandmother called him with a sound that was not a name or even a word, just a low, susurrating coo that meant he was her favorite, that she would cuddle him while she spooned honeyed millet-gruel into his mouth, that she would always lift her shawl for him.

2\. The gravity was less on Fest and he never adjusted. Every other world except Bespin made him feel heavy and irritable, like the air refused to let him lift his feet. His heart hung in his chest like an anvil. He preferred to swim because water was more forgiving. He had not been in an ocean for a year when he met Jyn.

3\. He found sabacc boring but he played well because he had to. He liked to use the same gambits when he gambled but that meant he could never play with the same opponent. He could count cards but he didn't bother because he could read humanoid faces and he had an ability to smell when insectoids were cheating. He never played if there was a Hutt present. They were bad luck and his skin crawled if he had to cash in his chips and take the tokens from them.

4\. He cared more for friends than for lovers. He'd had so many lovers and so few friends. He liked sex but he was unmoved by kissing until he met Jyn. She tasted like questions, like Alderaanian mountain sugar, like the most curious, demanding, incessant affection.

5\. He'd expected to die years ago. He thought he might be a ghost except that K2 argued with him too much. It had made sense to sacrifice himself for the Rebellion, for Jyn's redemption and then he hadn't died. He'd barely been able to breathe until she slung his arm around her narrow shoulder and he realized how strong she was, how delicate. Being held by Jyn felt like a dream, it felt like the sea, and he was happy. She whispered his name over and over and it was finally his. Cassian. _Cassian_.


End file.
